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<title>We never got our hearts in tune by kimabutch (CWoodP)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23295385">We never got our hearts in tune</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CWoodP/pseuds/kimabutch'>kimabutch (CWoodP)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>RQG Femslash Week 2020 [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Hurt No Comfort, Minor Injuries, Pining, spoilers for Ancient Rome sidequest</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:42:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,164</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23295385</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CWoodP/pseuds/kimabutch</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In Ancient Rome, Sasha thinks of Azu. </p><p>Written for day three of RQG Femslash Week: Missed opportunities.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Azu/Sasha Racket</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>RQG Femslash Week 2020 [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672117</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>RQG Femslash Week 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>We never got our hearts in tune</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title is from I Never Was to Africa by Ferron. Thanks to Bri for beta-reading!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s a small river that runs near the villa that Sasha’s made her home. Sometimes, when she needs to be alone, and there’s already a kid on the roof that she taught them to climb, she goes wandering by it. </p><p>It’s a new experience. Hundreds of years in the future, she’d fished for eels in the Thames or gone playing in the filthy streams of Other London, but this kind of outdoor river, running freely and quickly in the open air, is different. She watches the way water weaves expertly between rocks and jutting plants, and there’s something familiar and comforting to that. </p><p>It’s a wet spring morning when Sasha finds a large tree collapsed across a shallow part of the river, fallen during last night’s rainstorm. She’d set out on a walk because her heart hurt in a way that it still did sometimes, like she had left part of it behind when she fell through time. And maybe that heartache is why, as she scampers onto the log, she thinks of Azu. </p><p>This tree, see, it’s huge, but it can’t stop the river from running by it, can it? The water just keeps on slipping under and around it, no matter how big the tree is, no matter if the river wants to stop by the log. But then, the water does slow a bit, pools in places and has to take longer to slip around the tree than it would if it went straight, and when it comes out the other side, it’s taking some of the leaves from the fallen tree with it. And maybe that was sort of how she was with Azu. Azu, strong and patient like the tree. Sasha, like the water. Maybe she never could have stayed no matter if Azu had been there or not, but that didn’t mean she didn’t stop or that Azu didn’t make a difference, you know?</p><p>Look at her, being all poetic and stuff. A few years ago, when she got here, she wouldn’t have thought of that, wouldn’t have seen the point of all those words. It’s all Cicero’s fault, she thinks, that she’s able to sit here on this log for so long and think of stuff to compare her old friends to. </p><p>But Sasha’s still Sasha, and she needs something to do with her hands. So the next day, she comes back to the tree with an axe she found in the barn and cuts off part of a branch.</p>
<hr/><p>Sasha’s not great at whittling. You’d think it would be easy, with all she knows about knives, but she’s not even sure if she’s supposed to use one of her stabbing-people knives to do this sort of thing. She keeps wedging it too far into the wood and spending half her time pulling it out. At least the tree has lots of branches for when she messes up. </p><p>But still, it’s something to work on, and as she sits on the log with her knife in one hand and a piece of wood in the other, she wonders if Azu had ever made things like this. She tries to remember if she’d ever seen her do any art when they were together, and that hurts to think of — she hadn’t really known her for that long, had she? Hadn’t had time or thought to ask her about what things she liked to do when they weren’t about to die. There had been once that Azu had sung when she was scared, in her deep, soft voice that Sasha can still hear sometimes, but Sasha cringes remembering herself telling Azu to be quiet. She wonders what the song was. </p><p>Dragging the knife rhythmically over the wood, Sasha imagines Azu’s hands doing the same thing. She’d be good at it, probaby. She was — is? Will be? — strong and even clumsy sometimes, but so gentle and careful when needed. She remembers the way that Azu held the clam that the Heart of Aphrodite had been in, like it was made of glass and she could break it by thinking about it. She’d put her hands, callused from years of farming, around the case so tenderly, and they were so large that they’d almost enveloped it — fuck. There’s a gash in Sasha’s skin where the knife slipped, already dripping blood onto the log.</p><p>Well. She’d have to tell the kids that she’d been fighting a bear. </p>
<hr/><p>It’s well into summer when she finishes it. It’s not as smooth and it’s much smaller, but it’s the Heart of Aphrodite, just like she’d seen it back then. She runs her thumb along the whittled wood, almost laughing at the thought that she’d made it, and thinks of Azu’s face when she’d given the Heart to Fairhands. Azu had been covered in blood, one tusk broken off and a gash across an eyebrow, and looked like she was terrified of doing anything wrong, but the moment she handed it off, she’d looked at Sasha, and she smiled like she knew with complete faith that this was going to work, like she never had any doubts that she should almost die fighting for someone she’d only known a week. </p><p>Sasha had been too scared to know what to do with that smile, too focussed on not being undead to feel the jolt in her stomach that she feels now, remembering it. Had she ever really thanked her for that? </p><p>She tries to push the thought out of her mind as she fishes the string she’d brought out of her pocket, and threads it carefully through the hole she’d painstakingly bored into the wooden heart, before tying it like a necklace and slipping the pendant under her tunic. She’d never liked that pretty stuff Eldarion tried to put on her, always thought that a necklace would get in the way of a fight, but this one feels different, somehow, more solid, not for show. And Azu had worn one, under her armour, even when she was fighting — Sasha had seen it in Rome, when Azu had taken off her half-plate to sleep, a small version of the Heart. She wishes she’d asked her where she’d gotten it. </p>
<hr/><p>That evening, as Sasha lies in bed listening for the breathing of half a dozen kids, she holds the heart that’s still around her neck, and her thoughts return to Rome. To waking up after an invisible thing had knocked her cold and finding herself being held in someone’s arms. She’d panicked for a second the way she always did when someone touched her without telling her first before she’d felt the pendant pressed against her back and realized it was Azu. She’d been too exhausted from the battle to complain, and had fallen back asleep. </p><p>Now, as she grips the heart, she thinks that she might like to be held again like that, again. She might have asked Azu to, someday, but she won’t. </p><p>The river runs on. </p>
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